Pelosi vs. CIA: Separating the power plays from the scandal

Nonetheless, the 69-year-old House speaker - arguably the most liberal Democratic leader on the national stage - is suddenly fighting for her reputation, if not her job, in response to GOP assertions that she had been briefed on the waterboarding and didn't object.

Pelosi has said that she was only told that the CIA was seeking legal guidance on waterboarding, not that it was actually being performed, and said last week that the agency misled her.

Her decision to take on the CIA may have been intended to preserve her credibility in liberal circles, but it stirred up a firestorm among moderates and conservatives of both parties who rushed to back the intelligence community.

Now, the controversy is likely to become a test of President Obama's leadership - not to rally the country, but to quell dissension in his own ranks.

Like many similar Washington events, it is a power play masquerading as a scandal. What's different about it is that two separate forces are involved.

The first, of course, is the Republican leadership who fear being tagged as torturers, especially with so many liberal activists demanding a criminal investigation: If Republican congressional leaders can demonstrate that they knew only as much as Pelosi knew, it could quell the demand for prosecutions, and perhaps ensure that House Democrats don't push for a "truth commission."

But with Pelosi's seemingly ill-advised decision to take on the CIA, another strong force comes into play: Pelosi's rivals within the Democratic Party.

Like the Israeli Cabinet or the court of a Bourbon king, the House Democratic leadership is truly a team of rivals, and even its former members - such as Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and CIA Director Leon Panetta - carry battle scars and nurture ancient grievances.

So it was that Panetta, who once represented a liberal California district much like Pelosi's and has been, at various points, her ally and her rival, threw gas on the fire by issuing a memo to agency employees on Friday defending the CIA's integrity.

While he didn't specifically address Pelosi's claim, he declared, "Let me be clear: It's not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values."

As with most characters in this drama, Panetta's motives seem to be complex. He lost some support in the CIA ranks by failing to prevent Obama from releasing the memos on torture - a decision some agents believe could endanger their colleagues - and seems to have seized the first chance to defend his troops.

Then again, some people say he was paying Pelosi back for some longstanding disputes, including a major disagreement over liberalizing trade with China, an initiative Panetta led in the Clinton administration and that Pelosi opposed in the House.

Then there's Pelosi's number two, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland. He ducked opportunities to defend her on the grounds that he had no basis to judge whether the CIA had misled her. This nonendorsement served as an obvious reminder that he would have the most to gain were she to be driven from her post, since he's next in line to succeed her.

Moreover, Pelosi tried unsuccessfully to replace him in 2006 with Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the longtime Pentagon advocate who broke with Bush over the Iraq war.

Hoyer is a more consensus-oriented, risk-averse politician than Pelosi, and were he to supplant her as speaker, he'd be less likely to push through the more expansive - and expensive - aspects of Obama's agenda.

That's why Obama - the only figure with enough power and credibility to force the House Democrats into line - is likely to do what it takes to keep her in the speaker's chair, as long as she can be effective.

Obama's support is likely to endure despite the fact that Pelosi and his chief aide Emanuel have had their own sometimes rocky relationship. That's because the Obama administration doesn't want to alienate female voters who are still upset over his defeat of Hillary Rodham Clinton last year.

Got it? There may be some big principles at stake in the Pelosi-CIA fight, but politics seem more likely to prevail in the end.

Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond. He can be reached at canellos@globe.com.